Penance: A Chicago Thriller by Dan O'Shea Read Free Book Online Page A

sacrilege. Told him that Picasso might be a drunk and can’t keep his pants zipped, but at least he makes a decent slide.”
    The mayor didn’t move, hands clasped in the small of his back, still facing the window, silent again. Clarke couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
    “I’m very sorry, sir,” he said, “about David.”
    The mayor nodded. “You was his friend, Junior always said that. Said you did good work for him. Said you was loyal to him. You and me, we got our differences. But you were good to my boy. I ain’t gonna forget that.”
    Clarke didn’t buy the personal emotions, he knew he was being handled. The mayor was as close to a sociopath as anyone Clarke had ever known. “Thank you, sir. He was a great man. I am proud of what I’ve been able to do with him.”
    “Still proud, after tonight?”
    “I, eh, I didn’t know…”
    “About the queer thing? Yeah, I know. I thought about it, maybe over the years. Seen this and that made me think. I wondered should I have said something. But there’s things you don’t wanna think, not about your own boy. Then he got married, and with the wife and the kid on the way and all, I thought maybe he’d be OK.”
    “It shouldn’t define him, a single weakness. It shouldn’t become all he was. It shouldn’t be used to tarnish what he stood for.”
    He could see the mayor nodding.
    “It ain’t gonna. Nobody’s gonna know. Not ever. You understand that?”
    “Riley told me.”
    “I’m not asking did Riley tell you. I’m asking do you understand that nobody’s ever gonna know?”
    “Yes, sir. I understand.”
    Another long silence. The mayor spoke first this time.
    “Junior was right, you know, about me, about how I run things. Not the way it oughta be. It was different times I come up in. You got your Hitlers and such, and nobody’s worrying too much how do you beat the son of a bitch. You do what you gotta do. And then I get this job, and see so much that needs doin’ and everybody wantin’ to chinwag everything to death. And so maybe I find some corners to cut and strings to pull, and pretty soon, I look back and I got sick fucks like Stosh running things just cause he’s got half the city by the balls. And now I gotta live with did I get my own kid killed.”
    “It does need to change, sir.” Clarke was being probed, he could feel it. Hurley could write history any way he wanted, but Clarke would always have the rough draft, so Hurley needed him.
    “Such a waste. He was our chance. Move away from all this crap, reach out to the next generation. There’s Billy, of course, but he ain’t got it, not like Junior did.” Billy was the mayor’s other son, just finishing college.
    Careful here, thought Clarke. “It doesn’t need to be a waste, sir.”
    Hurley finally turned away from the window. “You got something to say, spit it out.”
    “You need a bridge to the new generation, and you need a placeholder until Billy is ready to take the stage.”
    Hurley’s eyes glinted, almost the hint of a smile, seeing right through to Clarke’s play. “You think you’re the solution.”
    Clarke nodded. “You’ve never really gotten to know me. You saw the Ivy League polish, and you wrote me off as some pantywaist. But you and I have the same ideology.”
    “Only ideology I got is power,” said Hurley.
    “Exactly. Whatever it is you want to do, you have to have power first.”
    “So you want me to slot you into Junior’s place?”
    “Given recent events, we would have the assurance of each other’s fealty.”
    “You get a ticket to the big show, and I get a pet senator?”
    “Within reason.”
    Hurley walked back to the credenza, pulled a bottle of Jameson’s from the cabinet, poured some into a couple of highball glasses, handed one to Clarke.
    “Never work. No secret around town how you and me get along. I put you up, you’d look like a poodle on a leash.”
    “We can get around that.”
    Hurley put a hand up, shushing Clarke.